UNIMARC, RDA and the Semantic Web

Gordon DunsirePresented at Les Journées ABES

26-27 May 2010, Montpellier, France

(Originally presented at WLIC 2009, Milan, Italy)

UNIMARC

A carrier format intended for the exchange of bibliographic metadata between the systems used by national agencies

GoalsMaintain and develop in alignment with other

MARC formats and new bibliographic standards.Enhance portability of data to the Web

environment and interoperability with other standards.

Improve availability of documentation.Promotion, dissemination, user support.

UNIMARC – ISBD - FRBR

UNIMARC is aligned with International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD)Specifies data elements and their display

ISBD is aligned with Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR)User-focused model for bibliographic data

All 3 standards maintained by IFLA groupsUNIMARC ISBD FRBR

RDA: resource description and access

New metadata standard for describing the content of information resources

Designed for the digital environmentBuilt on 100+ years of experience in developing

the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR)

Intended for international useFocus on library collections, but seeks

compatibility with metadata in related communitiesE.g. Archives, museums, and publishers

RDA – FRBR - FRAD

RDA aligned with FRBRRDA attributes grouped by FRBR entities

RDA also aligned with Functional Requirements for Authority Data (FRAD)Also maintained by IFLA

FRBR aligned with FRADPart of the “Functional Requirements” family

RDA FRBR FRAD

RDA - ISBD

RDA is not designed for any specific metadata carrier format

But mappings developed from RDA elements to ISBD and MARC21 formats to maximise integration with existing data

RDA ISBD

RDA MARC21

Material designation

ISBD and AACR use the device of a general material designation (GMD)Early warning to catalogue users of how resource

content is to be accessed and usedThrough a particular human sense (sight, hearing, etc.)With a specific intermediation device (computer,

magnifier, etc.)

GMDs do not clearly separate content mediation (e.g. Sight) from carrier mediation (e.g. Magnifier)

ISBD area 0

New area covering content form and media typeSeparates content type (form) from carrier

(media) type

RDA has also developed separate content and carrier categoriesPartial alignment between ISBD and RDA

categoriesSome are exact matches

Framework underlying RDA categories can be applied to ISBD to improve alignment

RDA/ONIX framework

An ontology developed by RDA and the publishing community to improve metadata interoperability

Set of low-level attributes combined to form high-level content and carrier types for RDA

E.g. RDA content type “spoken word”Category attributes

Character: LanguageSensoryMode: HearingImageDimensionality: not applicableImageMovement: not applicable

Vocabulary Mapping Framework (VMF)

Project to extend the RDA/ONIX frameworkJune-November 2009

Extension covers roles and relationships between bibliographic entities and agentsE.g. Manifestation:hasManufacturer:PublisherE.g. WorkA:isDerivedFrom:WorkB

Framework extended to cover other standardsCIDOC Content Reference Model (CRM), Dublin

Core (DC), FRBR, IEEE-Learning Object Metadata (LOM), MARC21

VMF

RDA VMF(RDA/ONIX+)

MARC21CRM

LOM

ONIX

FRBR

Alignments

Alignments are not exact (one-to-one)Mappings may be fuzzy, partial or out-of-dateSome are latent within underlying schemas

E.g. RDA/ONIX framework

Development of one standard may not be synchronised with aligned standardsStandards independently maintainedAligned standards may be subsequently re-

examined and developed

Alignment drift may be amplified in a chain of mappings

The (partial) chain

RDA

VMF(RDA/ONIX+)

ONIX

CRM LOM

FRBRUNIMARC ISBD

FRAD

MARC21

From UNIMARC to RDA and back again

UNIMARC ISBD RDA

UNIMARC ISBD FRBR RDA

RDA MARC21 UNIMARC

• 2001 mapping between UNIMARC and MARC21

• Time to review alignments?

Importance of (mis-)alignment

Impact on national cataloguing rulesE.g. Italian rules

New rules - FRBR?Current rules - UNIMARC

But FRBR - RDA - ISBD - UNIMARCSignificant impact on new rules?

Semantic WebLinked-data depends on (semantic) alignments

(Semantic) web

1997 mapping from UNIMARC to Dublin Core

UNIMARCXML also available

DCMI RDA Task Group is expressing RDA vocabularies for attributes and values in Semantic Web formats

VMF project intends to do the sameSimilar initiatives elsewhere

FRBR namespaces, LCSH, etc.

UNIMARC DC

To the future

Semantic Web allows “mash-up” of metadata from different sources using different standardsPublication statement from publisher; subject

from author; summary from user; ? from cataloguer

Applying FRBR will help

Multi-lingual sources easier to interoperate“gesprochene Worte” has same identifier as

“spoken word”

Time to review UNIMARC and the Web?

Thank you

g.dunsire@strath.ac.uk